Reflections: 04/09/2018

I was at church, the Sunday after arriving home to attend my grandmother’s funeral in Germany. Standing in the bleachers of the gym where we would congregate. I was silenced.

In a physical, emotional, and very real way. I could no longer sing. Speaking was iffy.

The words the church were singing. The worship they were offering, I could not be a part of.

I was too broken. I could not cry out loud, because if I did, I did not think I would be able to stop.

So I did what I always did at this point in my life. I shoved everything down. I gritted my teeth, let silent tears fall, and wrote this poem.

This declaration that God is Good.

Even when your heart is broken.

Even when years of hurts are threatening to overwhelm you.

Even when you’re living with a disease that you haven’t learned the name of yet.

Even when you cannot speak.

God is Good.

I was not feeling His goodness in the moment. In fact, it would take a very long time before I was sure I was experiencing His goodness again.

But the beauty of truth, and of God’s consistency, is that it does not depend on our feelings.

This period of time, and the journey that comes right after this journal entry, is one that still brings tears to my eyes (even as I am writing this) and a haunted look on my husbands face. It was a long and difficult path to come from this place of writing that God is Good to really, truly understanding what that means. It was ugly, at times emotionally brutal, and I was definitely not a hero during much of it.

But it was necessary.

Because this is also the period of time when I was first diagnosed with depression.

It was also when I figured out that I had been living with the disease for a very long time. It was when I figured out that it is a physical ailment caused by how the chemistry in my brain works.

It is also when I learned I didn’t have to live in the darkness anymore.

God is so Good.

My life today is very different from how it might have turned out if I didn’t have to go through this difficult time. I have learned that sometimes the darkness we think is crushing our souls and pushing in on us from every side is really the shadow of His wings.

The shadow of His protection.

The shadow of a Father holding you so close, you can’t see the full picture yet.